News archive
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People power - a realistic solution to britain's energy crisis?
24th February 2010
“Individual householders becoming little generation plants and selling power back into the system is a wonderfully attractive and seductive idea,” says Professor Dieter Helm, an energy policy expert at Oxford University, who also advises the government. “We would all like to be our own power stations and make money.” But Professor Helm fears this is an idealistic solution. This method of producing energy is extremely expensive because it’s unreliable, so it...
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'Carbon tax' is sensible, and perhaps inevitable, advocate says
21st November 2009
From the LA Times: Dieter Helm of Oxford says climate change policy should focus not on carbon production, but carbon consumption. A tax on carbon-heavy activities places the emphasis where it belongs, he says. By Henry Chu Reporting from Oxford, England <br /> With the global climate change summit in Copenhagen just a few weeks away, gloom has settled in many quarters over the increasing likelihood that a robust international treaty to lower carbon emissions is out of reach, at least...
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Can You Have Prosperity Without Growth?
17th November 2009
From the New York Times: By JEREMY LOVELL of ClimateWire LONDON -- Efforts to combat climate change will remain hobbled because of the failure of the economic system to give the planet's environment a value and actions that harm it a cost. Such a cost may violate the belief in unremitting consumption that many economists and businesspeople (and more than a few consumers) hold, but the absence of a price on carbon emissions is a situation that needs needs to be fixed urgently. That,...
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German regulation threatens vital gas-infrastructure development
2nd November 2009
From The Petroleum Economist ...Dieter Helm, an Oxford University professor and adviser to the UK government on energy policy, criticises the EU for forcing through liberalisation before building the interconnections between national markets... Click here for the full article
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Emissions reductions are misleading, says government's new science adviser
1st October 2009
Britain's reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases are misleading, according to the government's new chief scientist. Professor David MacKay told the BBC that greenhouse gas emissions created by Britons are probably twice as bad as official figures suggest. The figures are distorted because developing countries now made the goods that Britain buys, he said. "Our energy footprint has decreased over the last few decades and that's largely because we've exported our industry," MacKay said. "...
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Britons creating 'more emissions'
30th September 2009
From the BBC website: Greenhouse gas emissions created by Britons are probably twice as bad as figures suggest, says the government's new chief energy scientist. Professor David MacKay told the BBC that reductions in carbon dioxide emissions since 1990 are "an illusion". "Our energy footprint has decreased over the last few decades and that's largely because we've exported our industry," he said. Developing countries now made the goods that Britain buys, he added. He was speaking unofficially...
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Trust me – we have a serious carbon credibility problem
26th September 2009
By Tim Harford in the FT: My daughters (average age: four) have a serious credibility problem. “Daddy, if you read just one more story, then we’ll go to sleep.” “Mummy, if you give me a snack now, I promise I’ll eat up all my dinner.” You know what, my darlings? We just don’t believe you, so there’ll be no extra story and no snack. Such troubles are not solely the preserve of little girls. Managers promise performance bonuses, workers do not...
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Taming the carbonivores
17th September 2009
From The Economist: FRANCE’S president, Nicolas Sarkozy, does not like to do things by halves. In characteristically grandiose fashion he described his plan to introduce a carbon tax as “the only choice that could guarantee…the future of our planet”. If it goes ahead, France would be the first big country to adopt such a tax, which exists in Scandinavia. But the proposal has already run into fierce hostility, from consumers, opposition parties—and even greens. Mr...
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Economist slams EU climate policy as ineffective
7th September 2009
From Euractive.com: The EU's climate legislation risks turning into a "grossly distorting and expensive policy" unless it is seriously revamped, a leading British academic has warned. In a paper released on 3 September by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, Professor Dieter Helm argued that the EU's climate change and energy package is little more than "a politically neat but economically inefficient set of...
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Interview: Dieter Helm
4th September 2009
From Nature: Oxford economist Dieter Helm co-edits a new book, The Economics and Politics of Climate Change, due out next month. Anna Barnett caught up with him in London to get his take on a long-term strategy for reducing emissions. There have been a slew of climate policy books out lately — what's new about this one? We're trying to stand back and take a colder and harder look at the challenge. The question is not so much what we should do as why we've achieved so little so far. Why...